For the first time in almost 20 years, northeast Tarrant County will have a new face on the commissioners court.
Former state representative Matt Krause, a Republican from Keller, will take over the Precinct 3 seat from Gary Fickes, who decided not to run for reelection after 18 years in office.
Krause and his fellow newly elected commissioner, Democrat Roderick Miles, represent a new era for the court. In just two years, all seats on the commissioners court have turned over. Elected officials with decades of experience stepped down, making way for new leaders.
Tarrant County government is already well-run and moving in the right direction, Krause told KERA in a recent interview.
"I think Tarrant County's doing a good thing. I think they've done it for a long time. So I'm just excited to come be a part of that process," he said.
The partisan makeup of the court remains the same: Three Republicans and two Democrats. The court has undergone a rightward shift under Republican County Judge Tim O’Hare, who promised to make the county more conservative during his campaign in 2022.
O’Hare was one of the people who encouraged Krause to run for commissioners court, Krause said. He served in the Texas House for 10 years, where he was a founding member of the conservative Texas Freedom Caucus. He has advocated for displaying the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms and banning gender affirming care for minors.
Krause is perhaps best known for his book list. In 2021, as chair of the House Committee on General Investigating, Krause sent a list of about 850 books to Texas school districts. He asked if they had any of those titles and how much they spent on them. Many of the books on the list included discussions of race and LGBTQ issues.
A wave of book reviews at Texas schools followed Krause’s list, the Houston Chronicle reported. Critics of the list said it was an attempt to ban books on those subjects.
Krause denies that. His list was a response to education legislation passed that year, like a bill that laid out how Texas teachers are allowed to talk about race, he said.
"Maybe we should have made that a little bit more clear in that initial letter to say, look, we're not banning any books. We're not saying any of the books that you have on your shelf are necessarily wrong,” he said. “We're just saying these books correlated to legislation that was passed. We need to know as a legislature, are we doing a good job or not? And is there a problem statewide?"
Krause also said the list was an effort to make sure the books on school shelves were age appropriate.
The book list came as Krause ran for Texas attorney general, challenging incumbent Republican Ken Paxton.
Then Tarrant County DA Sharen Wilson announced she wasn’t running for reelection. That’s when Krause turned his attention to county politics, running for Wilson's job instead.
He lost that race, which was fine, Krause said. A life out of elected office gave him more time at home with his wife, and to make it to all his five kids’ events. Then he heard about another retirement. County Commissioner Gary Fickes wasn’t planning to run again.
In November, Krause beat his Democratic opponent Laura Leeman, winning Fickes’ seat with 64% of the vote.
Krause's relationships with people in state government “hopefully will be a huge help to Precinct 3 and Tarrant County from day one,” he said.
"I feel like the commissioner's job is kind of the quarterback, right? You've got federal interests, you've got state interests, you got local interests. And our job is to kind of quarterback all those issues," he said.
Krause on county priorities
One of the problems Krause will have to confront as commissioner is the issue of deaths in the Tarrant County Jail, which spiked under Republican Sheriff Bill Waybourn. Since Waybourn took office in 2017, more than 65 people have died in Tarrant County custody.
That includes Anthony Johnson Jr., who died of asphyxiation after jailers pepper sprayed him, and one knelt on his back as he told them he couldn’t breathe. Two now-former jailers face murder charges.
Krause fully supports Waybourn, who has, “for the most part, done a great job over his tenure,” he said.
“Having said that, I think we all agree that one death is too many in the jail system,” he said.
Any preventable death is a tragedy, Krause said, noting that he has already talked with O’Hare and Republican Commissioner Manny Ramirez about the issue.
Although commissioners can't force the sheriff to implement any policies, they can offer recommendations.
“If we need to make adjustments, we need to make those, and the sheriff needs to be open to hearing those. And I think he will be,” Krause said. “I mean, having known the sheriff for a long time as well, he's a good man who wants to do the right thing."
In the past few years, the commissioners court has also worked to lower county property taxes.
Republicans and Democrats on the court have voted for tax relief. But before approving the latest round of cuts, Democratic County Commissioner Roy Charles Brooks warned any future decreases could hurt county services.
Krause said he’s committed to giving as much relief as he can to taxpayers, responsibly.
"If Commissioner Brooks is right, I'm sure that will come out in the numbers,” he said. “But if not, if we can go lower and help out the citizens of Tarrant County, I'm all for it.”
County property taxes help fund John Peter Smith Hospital (JPS), the county’s public hospital system. Cuts to the JPS tax rate means JPS will lose out on $14 million in tax revenue in 2025, according to the Fort Worth Report.
In fiscal years 2022 and 2023, property tax revenue paid for about a third of the hospital’s operations, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported.
O'Hare-appointed JPS board member Blake Woodard said at a meeting in September his long-term goal for the hospital system is to have a tax rate of zero. Other board members maintained JPS needs county tax dollars to thrive.
Krause doesn’t see the JPS tax rate hitting zero any time soon, he said.
“Maybe there is a pathway without any tax dollars going [to JPS]. I haven't seen it yet, and I don't know how long it would take you to get there,” he said. “If somebody on the board or somebody who's thought about this can show us the path there, I think that's fantastic. But for the foreseeable future, I don't know how you get away from that."
As for his interest in education, Krause won’t have the direct say he did as a state legislator. But that doesn’t mean he won’t be involved.
"If I see something that's worthy of speaking out about or speaking out against, I'll certainly continue to do that,” he said. “It just may be in a much more different role or capacity than it's been in the past, being directly involved. There's no book list at the county level, right?"
Got a tip? Email Miranda Suarez at msuarez@kera.org. You can follow Miranda on X @MirandaRSuarez.
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